Matching two cameras and generating LUT

[Mihnea Snooker]

Let's say I have two shots. One shot with a phone, or a consumer camera, and the other one shot on Red, Arri, etc. Is there any way to automatically match the good one to the bad one, with or without a color checker? I know I can do it by hand and I know I can color correct both using the color checker to match, but I just want to make Red look like iphone (in terms of color and contrast of course) without color correcting iphone footage.

Thank you!

Edited January 10, 2016 by Mihnea Snooker

[Greg R Greenhaw]

In DaVinci Resolve there is a feature called Resolve Color Management. Its meant to do that very thing. Basically match footage from multiple sources to a common color in a way superior to a simple LUT

With that said there is not magic fix to match multiple camera and exposures. I tend to map them all to Arri Log C output or Rec709 2.4 gamma

See page 91

http://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/DaVinciResolve/DaVinci_Resolve_12_Manual_2015-07-27.pdf

[Mihnea Snooker]

Thanks for answer! If I want to match bmc to arri, that is exactly what I should do, but to match bmc to random consmer camera that doesnt help... There has to be a way to use the color checker as reference to match different cameras but not color correct the footage from one of them.

[Sam Sheppard]

You have (borderline) identical charts shot by two different cameras?

 

If so then you could use the LUT node in Nuke or the CURVES node in Fusion. The Fusion CURVES effect has 2 inputs - the 1st is the image that you're grading the 2nd is the image that you're matching to. In 'Reference' you'll find a 'Match Reference' button. Select either RGB, YUV or HSL (RGB & HSL usually get the best results). You can then use the CURVE match to generate a LUT.

 

I would just do it by eye using any Curve editor. There's one in any professional colour grading software: Resolve/Baselight/Nucoda/Mistika/etc. Same for compositing software like Nuke & Fusion. If you're matching 'Good' to 'Bad' it's not hard. 'Bad' to 'Good' can vary from 'Difficult' to 'Impossible'.

 

Once you have the curves correct it's easy to export a LUT - either in the colour grading software or by applying the same correction to a specific chart and using software like Light Space to create the LUT from there.